My Cloud - John G Lawless

MY CLOUD by JOHN G. LAWLESS I don’t remember asking….. yet I am still hearing a babbling brook of mindless chatter rolling pebbles through my ears and across my mind. Noisome, acridly scented, sounds, a Charlie Brown like… wah–wah-wah droning in the background of my life. “You can’t say that!” “It might offend somebody – somewhere – someday.” “How can you even think that way??!!!” “Don’t you care how other people feel?” “Do you have any feelings at all for them?” “You can’t do THAT!” “WHAT WILL PEOPLE THINK!” “ Didn’t you see that sign?” “Why can’t you just follow instructions, do what you’re told, believe that we are right, that WE know what is best for you?” “If you ate less there would be more food to feed the hungry.”(Yeah but then I’d be hungry.) “If you drove less there would be more fuel for others to burn and fewer emissions.” (How the hell does that work???) “If you would only follow all the shoulds and musts then you’d know the reasons why you should entrust the future of the planet, the diet of your kids, to those of us entitled to pry off freedom’s lids.” “Every voice is equal when every voice is heard.” (That could be said of cows and sheep and noise within the herd.) “What is it that you want?”, they ask in obvious disdain and shudder when I mention my First Amendment claim. I wish that those who speak their minds would allow me to do the same without their constant reprimand “that I should be ashamed”. When I speak, and write, and act in a manner that I choose, I shouldn’t be belittled by the puppets of the fools. I do not need the politics of food, sex, and lies, nor special interest groups that see only through “their” eyes. I cannot be an island, so I choose to be a cloud - sit above the melee of “their” ever spreading shroud. Therefore, the conversations may be ended by a verse, a substantial update from the “islands” brutal curse as I, in karaoke style, sing a sixties refrain aloud: HEY! HEY! YOU! YOU! GET OFFA MY CLOUD!!** **The Rolling Stones – Get off of My Cloud(1965) John G. Lawless 5/30/2015